New Delhi | Feb 7, 2016 : Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy will co-chair 3rd India-Australia Energy Security Dialogue to be held from February 8th to 11th in Australia.
Besides official dialogue, several Roundtables will be organized during the Energy Security Dialogue with a view to get to know the state of art technologies in the relevant areas.
The discussion will also enhance business to business collaboration in different sectors.
The coal sector of India envisages doubling its production in next five years. This includes technology development, adopting best mining practices, environment management, development of skills, improvement of safety etc.
Australia being the leading coal producer in the world with very high safety records in coal mining is in a position to help India in improving the mining practices and development of environment friendly technologies.
It is envisaged that the technical cooperation between India and Australia in the coal mining sector would help India in improving the safety, production and productivity of coal mines besides developing clean coal technologies.
In regard to skill development, both the countries have agreed to set up a Centre of Excellence for Mining at Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad.
This facility is envisaged to provide opportunities for partnership between Australian institutions and ISM, Dhanbad in the areas of research and development, mining technology, safety and disaster management, clean coal and energy technology etc. and joint training programmes for technological, managerial and operational skill development in coal sector.
Government of India has recently put in place a policy for development of underground coal gasification and MoC is likely to come up with some coal blocks for offer for development of the resource.
The Australian companies can look forward for participation in this area. There is ample scope for the Australian mining companies in participating in the tenders for development of different coal blocks offered to various public sector companies in the recent past.
Coal India Limited is embarking on development of CBM/CMM from their leasehold areas where Australian companies can look forward for participation for developing CBM resource.
During the energy dialogue, India will share its perspective on upcoming opportunities for trade of LNG between India-Australia. Policy collaboration on issues pertaining to LNG trade will also be discussed.
A Roundtable discussion on LNG trade, chaired by Piyush Goyal, will take place in Brisbane on Monday.
During the Roundtable Indian participants will share their perspective on growth of natural gas and outlook of energy consumption in India and the Australian side will share their perspective on Upstream development initiatives for facilitating business opportunities for LNG production and trade.
A strong delegation is being fielded by India and will include representatives of Petronet LNG Limited, GAIL (India) Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. It is expected to build strong linkages in the field of Natural Gas strengthening existing G2G and B2B linkages.
In context of coal based power generation, the discussion would focus on how Australian Utilities have met the challenge of limiting the emission of pollutants like SOx, NOx, Particulate Matter and Mercury.
(Source: http://www.newkerala.com/)